Wednesday 14 March 2018

Greene King's Heritage Beers

I can't think when I've last put as much effort into finding beer as I did with Greene King's heritage beers. Three bleedin' trips it took me before I found them and even then it was only because I saw on twitter they had been reduced to clear that I wandered away from the beer section and found them in another display.



Still, on the plus side they were reduced to £1.87, which seemed very reasonable, particularly as the strong one is 6.5% ABV. It was in fact the pints bottles that caused my, and Tesco's, difficulties. They're made to a historic bottle design and so of thicker glass. The cardboard trays the bottles come in couldn't cope with the weight so the bottles were insecure. Tesco's response was to try and shift them as quickly as possible by giving them a massive display and a cut price.

Two beers "inspired" by records from the 1800s have been produced in the heritage range, both made using pale malt made from Chevallier barley. Chevallier is a land race barley that once the most popular variety in Britain. The Suffolk Pale Ale at 5% ABV also uses land race hops: Saaz and Strisselspalt. The stronger beer went a little off piste as one of the hops used (Bramling Cross) comes from Wye College breeding programme that started in the 20th century.

I didn't get upset by this though, as unlike some brewers that wander they didn't claim to be following a specific recipe, and I was keen to try beers made with Chevallier. The beers taste great too, the historic inspiration certainly made them crank the hops up from what's normally found in Greene King beers. More beers are planned for the heritage range and I look forward to seeing what comes next.

9 comments:

  1. It was interesting to see someone suggest in the comments on our positive review that there was 'hype' around these beers.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hmmm...all they did was send out a press release. Or does someone saying they like anything by GK count as hype?

      Delete
  2. Wish i could find some, did you harvest the yeast?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm going to start culturing from a bottle of the weaker one tonight :-)

      I recently learnt you can get GK yeast from 'Moorland' Hen's Tooth too.

      Delete
    2. Nice, will get in contact with you if you want a swap in the future. Will be doing two big ones this year, one in about 1-2 months if you are interested.

      Delete
    3. The one I'm planning with the GK yeast won't be ready for two years, but I do have a few things in stock at the moment...

      Delete
  3. Do we know if it's the production yeast? Don't most of the big brewers use specialist bottling yeasts?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I checked that one and it's the normal GK yeast :-)

      Delete
    2. Most big breweries use their house yeast if it isn't a strong beer (belgians sometimes use bottling yeast). Only in rare circumstances like, contract bottling or not having a yeast stock to hand (one off beers) are specialist yeast used. With smaller breweries it's more common to use a bottling yeast.

      Delete